Rochester & Monroe Co., NY

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Holy Sepulchre kiosk not complete

Ask in the office at Holy Sepulchre if all the burial records are on their kiosk. They will tell you that the records are complete. I found out that the kiosk records are NOT complete. Let me tell you the story…

This summer I have been copying the tombstones in a few of the old sections of Holy Sepulchre on the east side of Lake Avenue. My reason for copying those sections is that those sections have re-burials from earlier cemeteries. In fact I found some death dates from the 1850s and 1860s in those sections. One of the last sections that I copied was Section 12 East. It has one fairly full row of tombstones and then a lot of stones very sparcely scattered around the rest of the section. There are very few total tombstones in the section.

When I had completed copying as many tombstones as could read, I went to the kiosk in the lobby of the office to get a new map for that section. I put in about ten names and couldn’t find find any of them listed on the kiosk.

My first suspect was variations of the spelling of names. When I came home, I looked at index that was done by Charlene Freundlich of Holy Sepulchre records for 1872 to 1884 (see the index). I found 20 names that were spelled the same on the tombstones and in the index. I then went back to the kiosk the next day and looked up all twenty of the names. I didn’t find any of those people listed on the kiosk.

I had to wait until I could get to the office when it was open. That was last Saturday. I asked if all the burial records were on the kiosk. The answer was; yes. I then showed the lady behind the counter my list of twenty names. See kept looking but she also couldn’t find any of the names. It appears that she could also search by the section and was surprised when she couldn’t find any records for Section 12 East. She called another lady and she said that she wasn’t sure but that possibly some records weren’t in their database. She said that I should call during the week and ask for the information systems person; Mr. Moore.

I had a good conversation with Mr. Moore. He said that Section 12 East was all single graves and that they have problems with the burial locations in that section. So they didn’t put the names from that section on the kiosk. Also about half of Section 11 East is single graves. Those also are NOT in the database on the kiosk. So how many names are missing? My best guess is between 500 to 1000 people.

So how can you find records for these people? Check the index because the time period that lots 11 and 12 were active is covered by the index. Then you can see the burials records on film #1430996 which is available through the Family History Libraries. It is also on permanent loan at the Westfall Family History Library (here in Rochester) and is also at Nazareth College.

I’ll start typing the tombstones that I copied in Sections 11 and 12 and get them posted as soon as possible. But there are many people buried in those two sections without tombstones.